


beloved

by loki (lokigurl)



Category: Roswell (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 11:19:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokigurl/pseuds/loki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>season 3, destiny tag</p>
            </blockquote>





	beloved

They never liked me, you know.

Never.

No matter how hard I tried to be nice, or how many times I sat with each of them - helping them develop their powers... no matter how many daggers I let sink into my skin with nary a flippant comment back. No matter -

God, I sound like an impetuous brat. He used to call me that a lot. One time, he berated me in the middle of a parking lot - ranting about how I should be ashamed of the way I was carrying on. That I was a selfish, self-centered shell of the person I once was. How he couldn't understand how he was supposed to be expected to work with such an incompetent fool like myself.

I was nine years old. I asked for an ice cream cone.

Michael whines about how tough he's had it. Please. He has friends - real ones that care about him on a daily basis. Ones that knew about him and still cared - still loved him. He knows what it's like to be truly loved. Sure, he may not have had the best father in the world, but who of us does?

I would happily have traded his life for mine.

Did you know that Tess isn't even my real name? I've never really had one, not since I came here. Every time we moved I had to change it - sometimes three months apart, sometimes three years. Tess was the most popular girl at my old school. God, how I wanted to be like her - be her. She was one of those... those people who everyone loved, you know? She was sweet and nice and pretty - but not too pretty. Not the kind of pretty that you hated her for it.

She wasn't pretty like Isabel.

Anyway, I went there for a year and a half and she talked to me one hundred and thirty-two times. Most of them were a simple "hi" in the hallway, but it was still way more than anyone else. Everyone wanted to be her friend - I wanted to be wanted like that. I studied what she did, how she acted... I even changed my smile to the way she smiled. My eyes weren't blue before, either. A little stalkerish, yeah, I guess so. I try not to think about that.

Sometimes I'd touch the back of her shoulder, pretending to wipe off some dirt. Once I grabbed her hand to look closely at a ring she was showing me. I wanted to know if she knew how much everyone loved her, I wanted to feel what she felt... but somehow she blocked me. I didn't couldn't even get that sense of complete and total adoration vicariously. And no, I know what you're thinking. No, I didn't kill her. I didn't do anything to hurt her at all. I just... I just wanted to know what it was like.

I was beloved on Antar. There was much rejoicing on when the King chose me for his bride and the parties lasted for days. He would tell me stories of my life with eyes full of longing a tongue full of bitterness. I knew he was disgusted with the girl in front of him. I could see the hatred and in his eyes every day. He held me responsible for his inability to find the other three - said that I was not worthy of the King if I couldn't find him on such a tiny planet as Earth. He said that's why no one loved me here, because I wasn't worthy of anything.

I was beloved on Antar.

They were real, the memories. Max probably thinks they were part of a grand-mindwarp, but they weren't. I just wanted him to see that this plane is not all there is to us, that we have people who care about us back home. The first time I broke through that mental block, I bawled for days. Because, for the first time since I was dragged out of that pod - I knew what it was like to be loved. I can't explain if it was an aura or a feeling or just a memory - but I was warm, content. I was... happy.

Is there something in your life you've wanted more than anything? A quest that lasts for years and years? Do you remember how your world changed when you finally got it? I mean, of course you were thrilled - but didn't everything seem a little different? The flowers smelled better, the sunsets were more vibrant, the ice cream more decadent... that's what it's been like since I broke through. That's how I've been able to survive these last few years - He may have hated me for all that I'm not, but I don't anymore.

They all hate me, I'm sure of that. There's no way they could understand. And where would I begin to explain? I bet they wouldn't even believe that Alex offered to help. It was his idea! We were bitching about French class at lunch one day and I told him I had no head for languages. I think I mentioned how He hated me for that because I couldn't read the Royal Book. (He was not as 'worthy' as one might have thought - just a lowly, uneducated servant... but more on that later.)

Anyway, Alex said that maybe he could write up a program that would crack it. One of those things that would run simulation after simulation until we could at least figure out the alphabet. I was shocked - not only was he capable of helping, but he was willing. And he offered help to me. We started hanging out and discussing his work and I even gave him a couple of tips about how to handle Isabel. She never really did know what she had in Alex.

She played with his heart and turned a perpetual blind eye to the way he loved her. For what? Who? Grant? A guy should have been cast as the guy who gets killed in the opening credits of some horror movie? Please. I think that's why I don't feel so bad about all her supposed pain now - for all he did for her, was she ever grateful?

And yes, I realize how ironic that sounds. Stop, you don't have to look at me like that. I didn't want to kill him, I didn't mean to. And I know you think that all I had were crocodile tears, but they weren't. I - he, he was my friend. It wasn't just Isabel and the book that we discussed. It was so much more than that. About how we felt so outside from the rest of the group - Max and Liz, Michael and Maria had coupled off. Isabel tried her damndest to get away from us all and Kyle was in his own little world, trying to come to terms with everything that had happened to him. Alex and I, we had nowhere else to go.

So we went to each other.

There, I've said it.

I have felt his hands on me, his breath on my skin. I let his low murmurs of my chosen name drown out the constant berating of His voice. So don't tell me I wanted to kill Alex. Alex did something for me that no one else did - he made me feel wanted.

But everything turned bad so fast; I didn't realize what I was doing. I didn't. He had gotten so close to cracking the alphabet, but he didn't have access to the technology that he needed. He said that the University did but there was no way he could have any real progress in a weekend. So I gave him longer. Alex once told me that he wanted to see the Northern Lights. I gave them to him. I gave him every experience he ever said he wanted.

I knew I was asking a lot of him, so I gave him all I could and more. I gave him Leanna, a steady girlfriend who loved him. I gave him a cross-continent trip and the feel of snowflakes whipping against his cheeks as he skied down a mountain. I wanted him to be happy.

Because he reminded me of what it was like to feel that kind of joy. Alex gave me a way to redeem myself from the guilt I've been drowning in for my entire life. Alex made me feel like more than a pawn in a game of control. Kivar selected his most blindly loyal and dependent follower and sent Him to Earth with me. He was promised riches and power - neither of which Kivar would have ever delivered on. I know this because Kivar came to me through Nicholas. You wonder why I believed Nicholas, especially since he gives no illusion about his desires. But one thing I've learned as mindwarper extraordinaire - when memories are real and when they are faked. His weren't faked.

Kivar wanted me back to rule with him - with the King's heir he'd have power over the Royal Four and they would have to abdicate the throne. Nicholas touched my hands and I nearly fell over from the outpouring of emotion. My subjects, they were distraught with wracking grief over my death. Altars upon altars were erected to my memory.

Because, you see, I was beloved on Antar.

And that's where I'm going now. Far from Him, far from the people who want me dead. Far from Max who lives in a bigger lie than I could have ever created for him. And far from Alex, who haunts my dreams and gave me a way home.

Home, where I will be loved.


End file.
